


Breaking & Entering

by protectoroffaeries



Series: Kids on the Hill [4]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Breaking and Entering, Graffiti, High School, M/M, Swearing, Turning offensive graffiti into good and artsy graffiti, abandoned buildings, bad choices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-17
Updated: 2017-02-17
Packaged: 2018-09-25 04:53:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9803381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/protectoroffaeries/pseuds/protectoroffaeries
Summary: The boys decide to explore an abandoned house at the end of Herc's street.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'M BACK
> 
> this isn't based on a single true story per say ~ but it is loosely based on a few experiences I've had
> 
> y'all I really love writing Hamilton fics and I was wondering, is there anything specific you wanna read? like idk a certain au or idea u think it'd be cool if I write? if so drop me a comment
> 
> and if u like the fic drop me a comment
> 
> I love comments

There is an abandoned house at the end of Herc Mulligan's street, and honestly, it's creepy as fuck. It’s two stories, and it was probably dark blue once, but the paint has long since faded and started to peal off. Half the windows are broken. Termites and other insects have been eating it for years, and the wood that’s left has begun to rot. Most of the house can't be seen from the road because wild plants have cropped up all around it - and probably  _ in  _ it. There’s everything from weeds to saplings crowded around it, which makes it a nightmare for anyone with allergies to walk by in the spring.

John is certain that it's a combination of all these grotesque factors that inspires Alex to say, “We should go in there sometime.”

_ Sometime _ turns out to be that very day. Alex tells Herc and Laf that he wants to go explore the abandoned house as soon as they get to Herc’s house, and Herc and Laf respond enthusiastically. Herc is unconcerned because apparently he's been in it before, and it's not too dangerous. Lafayette is still relishing in the fact that his grandfather finally agreed to revoke his security detail, for the most part, and so he's free to do whatever the hell he wants. John remembers that feeling; he was the same when his father took away his detail. And imagine, neither of them have been shot yet.

Alex has somehow figured out how to ditch the Secret Service. John doesn't know how; he used to try and ditch his own security all the fucking time without success, and they were not as well-trained or as well-paid as the Secret Service. He suspects that Alex made some sort of deal with them, but he doesn't ask because he doesn't feel like going to court when President Washington finds out.

(Herc makes fun of them, the Capitol Hill kids, with their security details, fancy balls, and news appearances. John thinks that Herc used to be jealous, but now that he hears about all the shit that comes with being the children of bigshot politicians, he's grateful for his father's tailor shop.)

Herc gets some spray paint from his garage and hands it out, says if they're going to down to the abandoned house, they might as well have fun with it. Alex and Laf both look like kids on Christmas, which brings a smile to John's face, too. He decides then and there not to be so negative, so worried about this. That it'll be fun.

They follow Herc down the street and through the underbrush; Alex gets hit in the chest with a thorny branch, but otherwise they make it through unscathed. They stand a few feet in front of the side of the house, staring, until Herc shakes his spray paint, which is a burnt orange color, and begins to paint something on the wall. Alex shakes his own paint - forest green - and starts writing words, probably a quote, to the left of where Herc is working, and Laf runs forward and starts painting on Herc’s other side in a bright red.

John looks down at his own ocean blue can of paint. Then he gets an idea, and he stands next to Lafayette and starts painting. When he's done, there's paint on his fingers and his shirt, but there's also a beautiful soft-shelled turtle on the side of the crappy, old house. It really lightens up the eerie place, John thinks. He glances over at Laf’s painting and says: “What the hell is that, man?”

It looks like a red stick with squiggles on it. A failed attempt at drawing a dick? Maybe, but John isn't sure how anyone could fuck that up.

“It is a baguette,” Lafayette says, frowning at John. “Does it not look like a baguette?”

John starts laughing, which causes Herc to look up from what he's doing. Herc takes one look at Laf’s ‘baguette’ and bursts into laughter himself. Lafayette stands between them, pouting and swearing at them under his breath.

“Yours are not so good,” he mutters, glancing at John's turtle. Apparently, he can't think of any insults for such a magnificent turtle, because he looks away from it without coming up with a comeback. He looks at Herc’s, and so does John. Herc's doesn't look bad, but there is something a little of about the mouth of the cartoon bunny he's painted...

“What is wrong with its mouth?” Lafayette asks, crossing his arms and looking rather pleased that he isn't the only one with a mistake.

Herc raises an eyebrow. “There was a swastika right there; I covered it.”

There  _ is  _ mess of other, older graffiti on the wall in all sorts of colors. John painted over some of it himself when he created his turtle, but he hadn't really looked closely at any of it. None of it caught his eye as particularly artistic, and with good reason. Still, he can't believe he missed a swastika; he would've loved to hide it himself, or better yet, wait for the bastards who put it there in the first place to come back and give them a piece of his mind. Or his fist. His fist is good. Fucking Nazis.

Lafayette looks upset. John doesn’t blame him. “Are there any more? We must get rid of them.”

“I covered one,” Alex calls from further down the wall, and yeah, John can see where he covered it. Instead of turning it into something cute like Herc, Alex just left behind a filled-in circle of green paint. He's working diligently on something else now. Song lyrics, like John thought. From a Fall Out Boy song, though John can't remember the name of that one. Alex plays it a lot.

When Alex is finished his lyrics ( _ “I wish I dreamt in the shape of your mouth.”  _ John makes a mental note to tease him for that later.) and Lafayette has determined there are no more swastika on the wall, Herc motions for them to follow him behind the building. There's no graffiti on the back side of the house. John wonders why that is, but he doesn't stop to do any himself.

“The back door is jammed,” Herc says, “but I think this window’s open.” He points at a first story window that they can all reach with ease, except Alex, who has to stand on his tiptoes. Laf, who's the tallest, is tasked with pushing it upwards, and he grumbles something about how much easier European windows are to open. That's only true if they're being opened from the inside.

The window doesn't open; it falls inward off its frame and shatters on the floor inside the house. John winces at the echo of the noise, perfectly aware that they're trespassing, and it's still illegal for them to be there despite the fact that no one actually lives in the house.

“Well, fuck,” Alex says in the aftermath. “Herc, I thought you've been in here before.”

“Went in through the front,” responds Herc, “but that was at night. I thought someone might see us if we tried that way now.”

“You went in here  _ at night?” _ John exclaims. Like the stillness and the gaping darkness inside the house aren’t creepy enough from where John’s standing outside it, in the middle of the day.

“Yeah, because I'm not a little bitch,” Herc challenges.

_ “Oooh,”  _ says Laf, “those are the fighting words.”

“No fighting,” Alex orders, “Laf, give me a boost.”

“There's a fuckton of broken glass in there, Alex,” protests John, but Lafayette has already bent down and laced his fingers together. Alex ignores John's protest and puts a foot in Laf's hand and reaches for the jagged edge of the window frame. He grabs it, and John sees him flinch as the splintered wood sinks into his fingers, but he grits his teeth and pulls himself up. He has more upper body strength than John gave him credit for because he manages to pull himself through the window. John hears the crunch of glass under his shoes a few seconds later.

Alex goes around to the back door and starts kicking at it from the inside. “It's jammed,” repeats Herc, but Alex ignores him, too, and keeps kicking. After a few minutes of kick fails, Alex disappears, which worries John. He doesn't like Alex alone in there, and he's about to climb through the broken window himself, when Alex's muffled voice comes through the back door.

“Get out of the way!” he hollers, and even though none of them were standing in front of the back door, they all take a step back.

Something big hits the door and takes it right off its hinges; there's a  _ bang _ and a  _ crack  _ that are twice as loud as the shattering window. John blinks at the hole where the door used to be, and then he looks at the fucking  _ coffee table _ Alex threw at it to create the aforementioned hole.  _ Fucking  _ hell, he really underestimated Alex. John pointedly ignores the part of his mind that's telling him Alex's strength is hot. He doesn't ignore the part that says they should really stop fucking with the back wall of the house; if they take anything else out, they could bring the whole structure down on top of them.

“Alex, that was badass,” Herc says with an appreciative whistle.

“Thanks,” Alex pants. He looks and sounds winded; he may be strong, but physical activity still isn't his thing.

“You are bleeding,  _ mon ami,”  _ Lafayette says, and suddenly John's concern returns threefold. He looks Alex over until he sees that the blood is coming from where the idiot cut his hands climbing through the window. Dumbass probably has splinters buried under the skin.

“Don't worry about it,” Alex says, pulling a piece of dark fabric from his pocket, ripping it in half, and wrapping each piece around his hand. Like that'll do any good.

“Where did you get that?” Lafayette asks before John can tell Alex off for his recklessness. His eyes are on the fabric.

“Part of an old curtain. Come in,” Alex waves them in.

John goes in first: “That's completely unsanitary, Alex.” He looks down at the wrappings on Alex's hands.

Alex rolls his eyes. “I'll be fine, John, it's just a couple of cuts.”

Herc and Laf come in, too. Alex holds up his phone, which has the flashlight app switched on, and says, “I saw a door for the basement when I walked by the living room. Anyone wanna go down with me?”

“I want to go upstairs first,” Lafayette says, just as Herc says, “Nah, I've been down there.” The two look at each other, and Herc adds, “How about Laf and I go upstairs, and y'all go downstairs?”

“Sounds good,” Alex answers. Laf turns on the flashlight app on his iPhone, and he and Herc walk down the long hall. John watches them go for a second, and then he follows Alex through a doorway and into an archaic kitchen. There's a couple of broken plates on the counter, and when John peers into the sink, there's a rusty knife in it. Alex opens some of the cabinets, and lo and behold, there's assorted kitchen supplies in all of them. John wonders what happened to the last owners of this place because it looks like they just… left one day.

“Hey, look, I found a fire extinguisher,” Alex calls, pulling a fire extinguisher from beneath the sink.

“What are you doing with that?”

“I thought we could use it. I've always wanted try one of these.”

John frowns. “We don’t know how old that is. What if it… blows up or something?”

John can't see Alex’s face in the low light, but he doesn't need to. He can feel the look Alex is giving him, the one where he raises an eyebrow and presses his mouth in a thin line. The one that says  _ John, stop trying to act like you don't wanna do dumb shit, too. _

John sighs. “Okay, fine, whatever, but let me carry it.” It says something about how much Alex's hands hurt that he turns the extinguisher over without protest.

Alex walks over to a door that's opposite the sink and opens it. There are sinister looking stairs behind it, the wooden kind without rails that John's great-grandmother has to her cellar. Alex steps on them without fear. John follows him and prays that he won't go through them. They make it to the concrete floor of the basement without dying.

There is a lot of junk in the basement: a bureau missing two of its drawers, a bookshelf stacked with knick knacks but no actual books, and La-Z-Boy recliner riddled with holes, to name a few items that stand out. Alex peruses the junk for a minute, but he doesn't find any of interest, so he comes back to where John is standing at the base of the stairs.

Alex holds out his hands. “Give me the fire extinguisher.”

John sets the extinguisher down in front of him. “Don't pick it up, asshole.”

Alex doesn't respond, but he doesn't pick the fucking extinguisher up, and that's good enough for John. He kneels beside it instead and shines the flashlight over the instructions. Then, he pulls the pin and lifts the hose. He points at an antique vase sitting atop a tiny table and squeezes the extinguisher’s handle.

Foam doesn't come out of the extinguisher like John expects. Instead, a thick, white powdery dust shoots out with such force that it knocks over the vase and begins to fill the basement like a suffocating cloud. It makes John's eyes water when it wafts into his face, and it smells so rotten that he gags and starts coughing. He can hear Alex coughing as well, and so he tugs on Alex's shirt, and the two of them run back up the stairs and slam the door shut behind them.

For a minute, they just stand at the basement door and cough. “I thought those were supposed to save lives, not provide an alternative way to die,” grumbles Alex.

Before John could say something along the lines of  _ I told you that shit was dangerous,  _ the house groans and shakes from roof to foundation, junk falling to the floor around them. For a moment, John thinks it's going to cave in on them, and he grabs Alex and pulls him to his chest on instinct.

“John, what are you-”

There's the sickening  _ crack  _ of rotting wood snapping and giving away, a much louder reprise of the sound the window made when Lafayette accidentally pushed in. The house gives another shake in the aftermath, except this shake is accompanied by Herc and Laf screaming their goddamn heads off from upstairs. Then the house settles, and the shouting gets louder.

Well. At least it didn't cave in on them.

“Was that an earthquake?” Alex asks. John can hear the frown in his tone. Earthquakes don't happen much in fucking Virginia; John thinks that the more likely explanation is that Herc and Laf fucked with some essential structural component upstairs that sent shocks through the weak walls of the rest of the house.

They're still yelling at each other, Herc and Laf. John looks at Alex, though he still can't make out many of Alex's features, realizes he's still holding onto him, and lets him go.

“What the hell are they shouting about?” Alex asks in lieu of commenting on John's embarrassing reaction to the fear of the house caving in.

“Whatever they did to cause what just happened,” mumbles John.

Alex cuts through the kitchen and goes down the long hall they watched Herc and Laf disappear down earlier. It opens up to a living room full of furniture, including two sofas, a China cabinet, and an open space that looks like it used to contain a coffee table, except now it's full of...

_ Oh, shit. _

There's a goddamn  _ hole  _ in the motherfucking  _ ceiling,  _ and the spot where the coffee table used to be now holds the crumbled remnants of the ceiling, including a broken light fixture. And the motherfucking Marquis de Lafayette is  _ hanging  _ out of said hole, legs kicking into nothingness, and he's shrieking at Hercules in panicked French.

“Oh my God,” whispers Alex beside him.

John doesn't reply. He just goes over beneath Lafayette's legs and kicks the crumbled ceiling and broken light away. “Alex, go upstairs and tell Herc to come down here. Tell Laf to shut up and wait for me to call to him.”

“You think you can catch him?” Alex asks, understanding John's plan immediately. He looks between John and Laf's legs like he isn't sure this is a good idea, but he also doesn't seem to have a better one. After a moment's deliberation, Alex runs up the staircase, which sits just to the left of the open living room.

Left in the dark, John pulls out his iPhone and switches on its flashlight. He shines it at Laf's feet, which are still flailing frantically above him. Luckily for Laf, he's fucking tall, and the ceiling isn't that high, so really, if John doesn't catch him, he shouldn't get hurt  _ too  _ badly. But John is going to do his best to make sure he and Herc catch Laf.

John hears Alex tell Lafayette to  _ ta gueule,  _ which is basically the French equivalent of  _ shut the fuck up,  _ and though it's not the choice John would've gone with in this situation, it's effective. Alex has a tendency to be an even bigger asshole than usual when he's scared, and Laf screaming his damn head off wasn't getting them anywhere anyway.

John can hear the sound of voices, but he can't make out the conversation. A minute or so after Lafayette quits screaming, John hears footsteps on the stairs. Herc comes over to him and looks at Lafayette's legs in a dazed sort of horror.

“I told him not to go in there,” Herc whispers, voice so low John almost doesn't hear him. “I told him not to, and he  _ laughed,  _ and he  _ jumped  _ like a  _ fucking idiot _ , and the house shook, and the floor gave out, there was dust everywhere and… and… fucking  _ hell,  _ John, I thought he went all the way through and broke his damn neck.”

“He's fine, Herc,” John replies softly, trying not to imagine what it would be like to watch one of his friends be swallowed by the fucking  _ floor.  _ “He's fine, we're going to catch him.”

Herc looks away from Laf's legs, which have finally slowed in their kicking, and says, “You didn't see his face.”

John also tries not to imagine how fucking terrified Lafayette probably looks, clinging to the shitty floorboards that betrayed him in the first place for dear life. He fails. It's painful just to envision that expression.

“And then he just started screaming in French… fuck, I wish I spoke French, ‘cause he didn't seem to understand anything I was saying in English. Alex… well, whatever Alex said calmed him down, I guess.”

“Alex said shut the fuck up,” John says, and Herc blinks and gives a startled laugh.

That's good. He needs Herc in a better state of mind to help him get Laf out of the ceiling.

_ “Lafayette? Tu m'entends?”  _ John shouts, cupping his hands so his voice carries.

A muffled  _ “oui,”  _ comes through the ceiling.

John reaches for Laf's left leg; Herc reaches for his right. When Lafayette drops, hopefully they'll both get a hold on him before he crashes to the floor. “ _ Laf, lâche le sol,”  _ John calls.  _ Just let go, Lafayette. _

Laf hesitates for a moment, but he ultimately decides to trust them, because suddenly he's falling. John drops his iPhone, but catches Lafayette, and Herc grabs his other side, and they lower their friend to the ground without anyone getting hurt. Laf is breathing heavily, and Herc pulls him into a crushing hug. John grabs his phone and shines it up at the Laf-sized hole above them. He's terrified when he sees Alex looking down at him.

“Is he okay?” Alex asks, oblivious to the danger he's putting himself in, or more likely, he just doesn't care about his own well-being.

“Get away from there!” John hisses.

“I'm like twenty pounds lighter than Laf, John, don't worry.”

“Please come downstairs using the staircase,  _ mon ami,”  _ Lafayette requests shakily. At least he's seemed to regain his ability to speak English.

Alex huffs in annoyance, but he leaves the room with the weak flooring and comes downstairs.

“Can we leave now?” asks Lafayette in a small voice when Herc finally releases him from their fierce hug.

“Yeah, Laf,” Herc says, “we should probably go.” Alex mumbles his agreement, although John thinks he sounds a little disappointed that he didn't get to see the whole house. Oh, well. He'll live. If they stick around, though, they might not.

They go out the back exit, since it isn't so much of a door as a hole now, and grab Herc's spray paint from where they left it by the side of the house. Then, they walk back to Herc's house, discussing what to eat when they get there and pointedly not mentioning what had just transpired.

John gives the whole ordeal one last thought as the fucking house turns to a speck behind them; maybe their parents were right to try and put security details on them.

**Author's Note:**

> ok I can't speak French so if you do and you're like "pof that's totally wrong" just leave me a nice comment with a correction and I'll change it
> 
> ta gueule: shut the fuck up; its pretty rude from what I gather
> 
> tu m'entends: can you hear me
> 
> lâche le sol: let go of the floor
> 
> edit: thanks to Rulith for correcting my French!


End file.
